19) Taking steps

  To some degree, at least for the moment, I was safe. For a given value of the term safe.

  Nictob had hidden his lair with a ritual to disguise the entrance to the stairway leading up to his hole in the ground, so even if the Witch who had somehow installed a Core in his corpse was able to have it lead her back here, I would have some time to react while she milled around outside.

  And I had Totems to slow her down even more.

  I can send them out pretty far, perhaps I should explore further and set up an ambush point or two.

  Future plans, right now I need to set up a few things closer to home.

  Setting my summons to reopen the door to what I was now calling the library, I sent the hawk out to perch on the back of a chair in the kitchen from where it could see anyone walking by and attack them from behind. The snake coiled up and hid under Nictob’s cot, along with the three Dread roaches.

  The Undine got a worn but still sharp knife from the kitchen that was sword sized to him, and I brought him back into the library as my last line of defense. I also put the reptilian creature to work chewing at the knife’s wooden handle to gnaw it down for a better grip for its tiny hands.

  The Skeleton I set to work smashing the dozens of empty wine bottles that lined the walls of the bedroom into a collection of various shades of brown and green glass shards, before setting the thing to gather up the larger pieces into a wooden crate with a solid bottom.

  Viola few out into the hall at the sound of the first bottle being smashed against the floor, flying over the startled goat as it raced back into its room, she circled the beast a few times as it trotted around inside its chamber before flying back out to land where Caesar stood in the hallway watching the skeleton so I could direct it’s work in the bedroom.

  On its own, it couldn’t really do much other than stand still and wait to attack people.

  “Hey Fell? It would probably be bad if Missus Goat wandered off down the stairs, right?”

  I send a mental command to the skeleton who trotted across the hall with the sound of bones clattering on stone to begin slowly dragging the heavy door shut while also trying to push the curious goat’s head back into the room. I had to have Caesar give the creature a puff of flame from his mouth to drive the creature fully back into its room before the skeleton could finish shutting the door and begin struggling to lift the bar back into place.

  The Fairy leaned up against the fire lizard, then climbed fully onto it. “Ahh… Warm.” She made herself as comfortable as she could on a lizard who wasn’t all that much larger than her. “So what’s the story with the glass Fella.”

  Fell Ah? “I'm going to lay it out on the steps. Hopefully, it will at least make some noise if not slow people down if they try to get up here. It might even cut someone’s feet up, or their face if they walk through the illusionary wall and then trip up the steps.”

  She blinked, then nodded her head. “Can you have it sweep up the rest of the glass afterwards? I don’t want Missus Goat cutting her feet.”

  Wait, didn’t those hard hooves do anything to protect its feet? “Of course.” Like I didn’t have plans for the smaller pieces of glass. Nictob had a stone mortar and pestle.

  Glass dust would be very difficult to breathe or at least it would be once I figured out a delivery system to get in someone’s lungs.

  “Viola, I want to level up again. I think it’s been long enough. But is there anything you can think of to make this place more secure before I visit the Tower of Ascension?”

  The Fairy pressed her finger against her chin. “No. But Missus Goat is almost out of hay. We’re going to need to figure out some way of feeding her before it runs out.”

  I already had. Nictob had at least three more shoes, those would hold it for a while. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Blinky. Take me to the tower.”

  Once again I found myself sitting in the gray sand before the tower of Ascension’s tall doors, a thought summoned Caesar to appear behind my back and begin nudging me forward with its snout toward the doors which swung open in front of me.

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  Inside the tower, Unity stood patiently by her desk at the far end of the great chamber until I got close enough to bring Caesar to a standstill as I rolled the last few feet up to her waiting hands. The Liaison lifted me to my stand on her desk.

  Smiling, she sat behind her desk. “How can I help you today Fell? Leveling up of course, but anything else?”

  Well, Viola had asked. “Is there anything you can do to help keep a goat from dying of starvation?”

  The winged spirit leaned back in her chair, a thoughtful look on her face. “She is due for a new ability when you level up. How about I give her the ability as a Dungeon Fairy to bind the goat to her like a Tamer? Then she can feed it magic and serve as a substitute for a Beast Core to empower it and a number of other creatures equal to her Spirit score.”

  I regarded her pleased look in silence. “I wasn’t serious. Would it be useful? A goat I mean.”

  The liaison shrugged. “It won’t become more powerful since your Dungeon Fairy isn’t a true Tamer, but binding the Coreless isn’t permanent. She can have as many bound animals as her magic can support, and if anything happens to the goat, she can choose a new companion. Or even cut it loose if she ever found something better.”

  Well, that would give me one more thing between me and anything trying to consume me… “Do Fairies have a Spirit score? I was told they don’t have classes.”

  Unity brightened up and nodded, seemingly happy to explain things to me. “All beings with the ability to decide things for themselves have Spirit scores, just like anyone who has… “She paused and winced. “The ability to move or manipulate things has a Might and Agility score. They just can’t call up an interface to see what they are, but divination magics can read any set of scores unless the target has some way of blocking them.”

  Right. Might and Agility. The two scores I didn’t have as an inanimate ball of crystallized magic. Thank you so much for bringing it up.

  I had Caesar bob his head up and down to make up for the fact that neither he or I had shoulders to shrug. “Yeah, I guess. Set her up with that please.”

  Unity nodded and slid her hand across her desk to once again summon a sheet of paper which she wrote on with a feather quill from her own wings before handing it off to another smaller winged figure which appeared just long enough to take the message before vanishing again. “I can only suggest to the Mother that she offer the ability to her fairy. But I think the Patron of Life will go along with any reasonable suggestion we send her way.”

  The Liaison folded her hands up in front of her. “Now what about you Fell? Did you have anything in mind for your second level ability?”

  I lifted my innate Totem’s front paw to signal for Unity to wait. “Yes, but first. How do I level up my summons?”

  Her eyes went wide, “I thought… Wasn’t that included in our god’s gift to you?” She rubbed her forehead. “No of course it wasn’t. When you rise up a level, you can raise your Totems to match your level by filling them with magic. Ten points for each level they are going up to. So twenty to get to level two. Seventy to get to level seven, and that’s on top of all the magic you already put into them. It costs even more at higher ranks. Multiples of a hundred instead of ten.”

  She waved her hand at me. “All of that is pretty easy for you with your Spirit score, but it takes a lot of time and can empty out a regular Summoner’s magic pool to level up even one of their Totems.” My liaison rubbed a finger against the front of her lips. “Oh, and most of them are also pretty limited by their Spirit score in that they can only have as many Totems as their Spirit, and…” She paused and asked herself. “What else might you need to know?”

  The winged woman threw a finger up in the air. “Leveling them up raises their summoning cost, which limits how much your magic pool can refill. Most summoners end up having to take abilities to lower the summoning costs or increase how many totems they can have.”

  She gave me a proud look. “But you won’t have to worry about that, at least for a while.” Unity leaned forward. “But what do you want for your third level?”